The Bush administration and Republican Congress created a
limited voucher program for kids in Washington, D.C., which
has one of the worst school systems in the U.S.
This effort was opposed by, among others, the late Sen. Ted
Kennedy, who was one of the famed limousine liberals who
sent his kids to expensive private schools while opposing giving
poor families any choice in education. Indeed, he even
launched a filibuster against District children when the idea was
first proposed in 1997,
calling the measure a "foolish ideological
experiment."
Sen. Kennedy was wrong. Patrick J. Wolf of
the University of Arkansas explains:
The achievement results from the D.C. voucher evaluation are
also striking when compared to the results from other
experimental evaluations of education policies. The National
Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE)
at the IES has sponsored and overseen 11 studies that are RCTs,
including the OSP evaluation. Only 3 of the 11 education
interventions tested, when subjected to such a rigorous
evaluation, have demonstrated statistically significant
achievement impacts overall in either reading or math. The
reading impact of the D.C. voucher program is the largest
achievement impact yet reported in an RCT evaluation overseen
by the NCEE. A second program was found to increase reading
outcomes by about 40 percent less than the reading gain from
the DC OSP. The third intervention was reported to have boosted
math achievement by less than half the amount of the reading
gain from the D.C. voucher program. Of the remaining eight
NCEE-sponsored RCTs, six of them found no statistically
significant achievement impacts overall and the other two
showed a mix of no impacts and actual achievement losses from
their programs. Many of these studies are in their early stages
and might report more impressive achievement results in the
future. Still, the D.C. voucher program has proven to be the
most effective education policy evaluated by the federal
government's official education research arm so far.
This is the federal initiative which most helps improve
educational achievement of the kids who most desperately need
help. So the Democratic Congress naturally plans on killing
it. When forced to choose between children and teachers'
unions, the Dems know to go with the folks who make campaign
contributions. Sorry kids!
About the Author
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).
